The Penn plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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11° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 12° in 1959.
Penn’s center stands about 1,220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 1,900 ft, a difference of 1,120 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Loop Mountain, about 2,520 ft, 13 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Foreknobs Formation (sandstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 15 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 384 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 9 smaller units along the line are not listed.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Penn reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Raystown Lake, the Raystown Branch Juniata, the Juniata and the Susquehanna: about 200 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Aldred and Raystown Lake.
90 miles of the trip are on the Juniata.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Penn; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Penn has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Penn normally reaches 51° and falls to 34°. The record high is 73°, in 1993; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.25 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Altoona Blair County Airport, 12 miles west-southwest, 240 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
